He went to sleep thinking what a sweet loveable creature Blanche was, and how superior to Violet.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DISADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS.
The next day Julius was meditatively fishing in the mill-pool adjoining the village school, and trying to decipher the character of Rose, who alternately fascinated and repulsed him by her vivacity.
I have said that he was utterly destitute of all personal beauty. This is so common an occurrence, that it would scarcely be worth mentioning in any other case: beauty being the quality which, of all others, men can best dispense with. A charm when possessed, its absence is not an evil. In Julius's case, however, it happened to be important, from the importance he attributed to it, and the excessive importance given to it by him thus originated.
His nurse was a very irascible woman, and whenever she was angry, taunted him with being such "an ugly, little fright." As she never called him ugly but when she punished him, he early began to associate something peculiarly disagreeable with ugliness. This would have soon passed away at school, had not the boys early discovered that his ugliness was a sore point with him; accordingly, endless were the jests and sneers which, with the brutal recklessness of boyhood, they flung at him on that score. The climax of all, was on one cold winter morning, when the shivering boy crept up to the fire, and was immediately repulsed by a savage kick from one of the elder boys there warming himself. Crying with the pain, he demanded why he was kicked. The why really was a simple movement of wanton brutality and love of power, usual enough among boys; but the tyrant chose to say, "Because you're such a beast!"
"No, I'm not," he sobbed.
"Yes, you are, though!"
"You've no business to kick me; I didn't do anything to you."
"I shall kick you as much as I like; you're so d—d ugly!"